Dragonfire Rewritten
by Tineyboppa
Summary: A rewrite of the BBC Classic Who episode Dragonfire, to include my OC, and using narrative from the novelisation by Ian Briggs. When the Doctor, Mel and Anita arrive in the Space Trading Colony, Iceworld, the Doctor can feel that there is mischief afoot. And he and the girls don't have to wait long before they discover the culprit.
1. Chapter 1

Dragonfire Rewritten

_**Chapter One**_

In the Refrigeration room, dry ice floods into the large open space. By upper railings stand people in white uniforms with Prussian style hats - the ones with a nasty spike sticking out of the top. Another waits downstairs. A woman, also in white, leads in six people.  
>"Halt!" cries Belazs.<p>

Sergeant Kracauer's words hung mockingly in the frosty air of the Cryogenics Chamber.

"Oh, you lucky, _lucky_ people..." He paced in front of the new volunteers, eyeing them suspiciously. Six thugs – four men, two women – with more muscle than brain, recently the crew of the space-vessel _Nosferatu._ "You are the chosen ones," he taunted. "The elite, specially selected to join our force of mercenaries and create fear and terror wherever you go." He gestured round the dark chamber at row upon row of vertical tubes – over a hundred of them, maybe a thousand. The tubes, mostly opaque with frost, contained the motionless figures of humans caught frozen in suspended animation.

Kracauer halted in front of one of the new recruits and stared at him. A grimy, rough-faced crewman whom Kracauer had marked down as a troublemaker as soon as he saw him. The rough-faced man snarled back defiantly, "We were tricked!"

Kracauer smiled. "Mr Kane has paid seventeen crowns for each of you, and he insists on value for money."

"Seventeen crowns?" The rough-faced man's eyes began to blaze with anger. "You couldn't even buy a _dog_ for seventeen crowns."

In a single, powerful movement, Kracauer grabbed the man, and dragged him forward. The sergeant's voice was no longer mocking. It was full of threat. "_Precisely_. I wouldn't have paid seventeen crowns for the lot of you, let alone each." He saw the fear in the man's face, and laughed. Kracauer pushes him back and he falls, touching one of the open-topped vats steaming with low temperature gases. It burns. His face contorted with pain as he felt the biting cold burning into the flesh of his hand.

Kracauer laughed again. "Only frostburn," he mocked.  
>"Frostburn?" asks Zed.<br>"Liquid nitrogen. Minus two hundred Celsius. Just be thankful your arm didn't go _inside_ the vat, otherwise it would never have come out again..." He turned to one of the two guards standing over the new recruits. "Right, freeze them!" he ordered crisply.

The crewmen and women began to shuffle fearfully. A dark-haired crew-woman – either braver or more foolish than the others – spoke up. "You mean we're going to be frozen?"

Kracauer turned to her. "Until Kane needs your services, yes. What's the matter, getting cold feet?" He laughed at his little joke.

The rough-faced crewman looked around quickly. There were only two guards. One was preparing the six cryogenics tubes that stood waiting for the new volunteers. The other was momentarily occupied as he pushed the dark-haired woman back into line. The crewman took his chance. He threw himself on the nearest guard, takes his weapon and tries to run for it before the second guard could reach for her own gun. The pulse beams cut through the air in a series of random lines. Everyone but Kracauer dropped to the ground for safety. One of the cryogenics tubes exploded as an aimless pulse beam burst into it like a detonator.

The rough-faced man looked around for an escape route. They had been marched into the Cryogenics Chamber through a doorway beside the equipment controls. But even if he could get past the guard who was now turning her gun on him, he would encounter more guards down the passageway, drawn by the sound of weapons firing. As the guard pulled her gun up into a firing position, the man spun around and took the only alternative: a bulkhead doorway marked _Restricted Zone. _He hauled on the door as the guard's first shot exploded against the wall alongside. Sheer terror gave him a strength he had never known before. He felt the guard's second shot graze his shoulder, and burning metal sparks from the door showered his face. The guard's third shot came too late and exploded into an empty doorway, through which the rough-faced man had escaped barely a moment earlier.

The guard turned to Kracauer for orders. Kracauer smiled. "Leave him. He's in the restricted zone. He can't escape..."

Whatever the crewman might have expected to find through the door to the Restricted Zone, he was completely unprepared for the chill gloom he now found himself in. Huge shadowy walls of ice intersected at right-angles, turning the huge chamber into a confusing maze. Ice boulders lay at the foot of the walls, and the crewman had to pick his way carefully. As in the Cryogenics Chamber, vats of supercooled gases overflowed with a silent mist. Far away, he heard a thundering echo that sounded like icebergs shearing away from one another – except there was no sea here on the planet Svartos. Closer by, heard the shimmering tinkle of icicles. And, faintly but insistently, there was a tapping sound.

The crewman moved nervously among the boulders of ice and the mist-shrouded vats. As he picked his way through the ice and moved deeper into the Restricted Zone, the tapping sound grew louder. He followed the sound.

As he grew closer to the source of the sound, the Restricted Zone seemed lighter, allowing the man to make out detail in the shadows of the ice walls. He edged nervously towards the light and the stranged tapping sound, which seemed to be coming from behind an ice wall in front of him. He readied his gun, tensed himself, and suddenly threw himself round the corner into the light, with his gun levelled at the source of the sound - whatever, or whoever, it might be.

His eyes opened wide in amazement.

He saw a brightly lit clearing amongst the ice walls and boulders. In the middle of the clearing stood a huge, rectangular block of clear ice. Beside it, old man wearing a sculptor's smock is chiselling at the ice with a hammer and chisel.

The Sculptor stopped, and turned to look at the gun pointing at him. He seemed more puzzled than frightened.

The crewman was startled and confused by the Sculptor with his block of ice. He suspected some kind of trap, and wheeled round with his gun, in case someone should creep up behind him. But there was no one there. Just a large horizontal cabinet standing empty nearby, looking like a coffin with a clear lid.

The crewman wheeled back towards the Sculptor. As he did so, he slipped on the ice and fell sideways. The newly acquired weapon fell from his hand, and tumbled into a vat of supercooled gases. He tried to grab at it as it bounced on the rim of the vat, but he was too late. He saw it disappear into the frozen mist.

Carefully, he tried to reach into the freezing gas to retrieve the weapon. He reached into the cold mist, but as his hand came within a few centimetres of the liquid gas, he felt the biting cold eat into his flesh like acid. Instinctively, he pulled his arm away. He tried again, thinking of the gun that might save his life, but again the pain was too much. He crouched over the vat, nerving himself for another attempt. Suddenly a white clad arm with gold braid reaches into the vat of agonising cold.

The crewman watched in horror as the stranger's arm takes the gun out of the liquid gas. The flesh of the stranger's hand was now caked in hard, dry frost. The crewman looked up. The stranger was dressed in the same clinical white uniform of the Iceword guards, but where the others bore an official name patch on the chest of their uniform, the stranger's said simply KANE. The crewman looked up at Kane's face. It was deathly pale, apart from the intense shiny black of Kane's eyes. There was no emotion in the face.

Kane held the gun out for the crewman to take. Mesmerised, the crewman took the gun. He instinctively felt the biting cold of the superfrozen weapon, and drops it on the floor with a cry of pain. The gun hit the ground where it shatters into fragments. A slight smile seemed to flick across Kane's face, but quickly disappeared. Without taking his piercing black eyes off the crewman, Kane carefully removed the white glove from his other hand. The crewman watched, like an animal hypnotised by a cobra. Kane slowly reached forward as if to embrace the crewman's face. He pressed his hands against the man's flesh. Immediately, the crewman felt the frozen cold eating into his skull. He struggled briefly against the searing pain, but quickly fell unconscious. Kane picked him up and placed him in a Cryogenics Chamber.

Kane turned to the Sculptor, who had been watching quietly. He spoke softly to the Sculptor, "Pay no attention to the intruder. You may continue with your work." Obedietly, like a faithful servant, the Sculptor turned back to his block of ice and resumed his task.

.

**I changed the last scene a little bit. In the original episode, the crewman was killed by Kane, but in my story he just freezes him. I will be making my version less violent than the original.**


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

The Doctor looked at Mel's inverted face. She was balanced in a headstand against one of the walls in the TARDIS Console Room. Her face looked peaceful, but it had a sort of … well – an upside-down quality about it. She hadn't moved for the last twenty minutes. Nita stood next to the Doctor. The Doctor looked slightly crestfallen – like a child who's lost his playmate. He turned to the scanner showing the clear image of a small planetoid sunlit at the bottom and with a massive city on the opposite side. He turned back to Mel and cleared his throat loudly. There was no response from Mel.

"Mel?"

Still no response. "Can I tempt you with a jelly baby? You can have the red ones..."

Again no response. "She can't be dead," he said, "otherwise she'd have fallen over." He sighed. There was nothing else for it. He pushed at a slide control on the central console. The background hum of the TARDIS suddenly grew louder and the time machine lurched drunkenly.

There was a thud and shriek from behind the Doctor.

"Ah, Mel," he said brightly, turning to the heap on the floor, "back in the Land of the Living at last." The heap on the floor, however, was in no mood for such good humour.

"Doctor!" it screeched. "You did that deliberately!"

Mel picked herself off the floor, and began to advance on the Doctor.

"What, me?" protested the Doctor, backing away slightly, and wondering if overloading the TARDIS's stabiliser circuit had been such a phenomenally good idea after all.

"I was meditating! I was in a state of blissful serenity!"

The Doctor didn't know much about states of blissful serenity, and he continued to play the innocent. "No, honest, Mel – temporary fluctuations in the ion field..."

"I'll give you temporary fluctuations!"

The Doctor wasn't too sure what Mel had in mind, but it sounded unpleasant. He'd never had an older sister, but he was beginning to understand why they had such a bad reputation.

While all this was happening, Nita was rolling around on the floor laughing. She thought they were hilarious.

The Doctor decided a different approach was called for. He pointed to the viewing screen. "Look – the planet Svartos."

Mel and Nita peered at the screen. One side of the planet was baked in the intense heat from the nearby sun, but the dark side was cold and mysterious. A large structure which appeared to be made out of gigantic ice crystals glistened on the dark surface. And Mel and Nita could just make out several tiny space-craft, which were either just approaching or just leaving the outer crystalline limbs. "What's that on the dark side?" asks Nita, turning to the Doctor. This is her first trip since joining the TARDIS crew.

"That's Iceworld - a Space Trading Colony. Space travellers stop there for supplies." He turned excitedly to Mel and Nita. "I've been picking up a faint tracking signal for some time. I think there's something interesting going on there, ladies!"

The girls' faces broke into broad smiles. Mel realised it was no use trying to be angry with the Doctor – not when there was always another adventure waiting just round the corner...

The Freezer Centre was the size of a vast, low-ceilinged flight hangar. Brightly lit chest freezers stretched away as far as you could see, as hundreds of curious-looking space travellers trundled their shopping trolleys up and down the aisles. Posters hanging over the freezer chests proclaimed various special offers: _Iceworld Free-Range Phoenix Eggs – 19:95 crowns per megagram, Iceworld Special Offer – Crab Nebula Pasties – now only 9:95 crowns per thousand. _Concealed loudspeakers waltzed with a forgettable melody that had been 'bubbling under' the Easy Listening charts here in the Ninth Galaxy for the last 200 years. The music was occasionally interrupted by a _bing-bong _as some cheery woman with a sing-song voice intoned a distant announcement: "Don't miss our special offer in the Motoring Spares Department - photon refrigeration units for only twenty four ninety five. Thank you." _Bing-bong._

Stellar was fed up. She was a Starchild, looking roughly similar to a six-year-old Earth girl, and she was fed up of traipsing round a boring freezer centre with her mother. "Do keep up, Stellar," complained her mother from behind the mass of exotic black feathers that decorated her clothing. This mass of black feathers then turned to inspect the contents of another freezer chest, while Stellar trudged wearily behind wondering if they sold toys here.

There was a faint grinding sound coming from somewhere. Stellar looks up.

The sound was getting louder, but no one else appeared to have noticed it. It sounded like some kind of very old machinery, and it seemed to be coming from a gap between two freezer chests. As Stellar watched, she saw the faint outline of a tall object beginning to appear out of nowhere. She tugged at her mother's sleeve.

"Yes, darling – won't be a minute," replied her mother, not bothering to emerge from the feathers.

The mechanical sound grew louder as the mysterious object materialised. There was a flashing blue light on top of the object, which stopped at the same time as the sound, once the object had fully materialised. Stellar had never seen anything like this before. She tugged at her mother's sleeve once again.

"What is it, Stellar?" demanded her mother irritably, as she turned to see what her daughter was so concerned about. She looked at the tall blue cubicle now standing between two freezer chests. "Yes, it's a Police Box, darling. They have them on a dirty planet called Earth. I'll show you some pictures when we get back to the space-craft. Now where do you suppose they keep the deep-frozen lavatory paper?" She flounced off down the aisle, pushing her trolley in front of her, and dragging her wide-eyed daughter behind her.

The Doctor emerged cautiously from the TARDIS and looked around. No one seemed to have noticed the TARDIS's arrival. He was constantly surprised at how people are so preoccupied with themselves that they never notice what's going on about them. Mel and Nita followed him out, and looked round.

"A freezer centre!" Mel exclaimed in dismay. "How boring. I thought this was going to be an adventure!"

"Oh, trust not appearances, Mel. You never know what might be lurking in the freezer chests. Think gothic … Follow me."

The Doctor loped off towards a door marked _Refreshments Bar, _leaving the sensible-minded Mel and Nita wondering which was barmier – the Doctor, or the idea of a freezer centre in space – as they hurried after him.

Walk into a refreshment bar on any planet in the Twelve Galaxies and you might just as well walk into a refreshment bar on any of the other thousands of planets. They're all much the same. The same brightly coloured lighting and exotic fruit drinks everywhere. The same frontier-post bustle, with curious aliens arguing in strange languages. And the same bad-tempered barmen, who would rather spend their time polishing glasses and tumblers than serving customers.

In Iceworld, the barman was called Eisenstein, and he was currently glowering at three customers seated at the door. His assistant, a rebellious-looking sixteen-year-old waitress, was hurrying backwards and forwards with traysful of drinks. The three objects of Eisenstein's ill humour were a tall reptilian creature, a woman with blue hair and silver skin, and a small furry creature with disgusting table manners, who was actually a Galactic Ambassador. The woman seemed to be calling the Ambassador 'Erick' as she dropped small pieces of food into its mouth. Erick was managing to drool half of the food all over the table (which Eisenstein would have to clean up afterwards) and spit the rest of it over the customers sitting nearby. _Disgusting! _Thought Eisenstein, as he watched a small piece of half-chewed seaweed fly out of Erick's mouth and arc gracefully down the cleavage of a pig-featured hologram model sitting three tables away. _Absolutely disgusting!_

Just then, the door swung open and the Doctor marched in, propelling Mel and Nita alongside him. He looked round, then straightened himself, and strode up to Eisenstein. "Ah, two of your best strawberry milkshakes, if you please."

"Certainly, sir."

At a table in a dark corner, another customer was arguing with the waitress. He spoke with a distinctive thick voice. "There must be some mistake in the reckoning, Sprog..."

"The mistake's in your wallet, not my arithmetic!" argued the teenage waitress back. "And don't try and pay in Nebulous Shillings neither. I got into trouble for accepting them yesterday."

The Doctor looked at Mel. There was something familiar about the customer's voice.

"Do you take Asteroid Express?" enquired the customer.

Of course!

"Glitz!" exclaimed the Doctor and Mel simultaneously, as they bounded across to the dark corner, with Nita following. Glitz choked on his milkshake.

"What? No, never heard of him," he replied, trying to hide his face.

"It's us, Mel and the Doctor," countered Mel. "You haven't forgotten us, have you, Glitz?"

Glitz looked up. There was no mistaking the biggest rogue this side of the Greater Space Lanes: the rugged leather jerkin (for keeping out the astral storms), the securely tied money pouch (for containing the profits from his dubious financial deals), and the look of hurt innocence (for getting him out of trouble) – a rogue right down to the space dust on his boots. "Shush. Keep your voice down!" he hissed.

He peered at Mel, trying to remember where he'd seen her before. "No, of course I haven't forgotten you...er..." Suddenly he remembered. "Mel! And the Doctor!" He turned to the Doctor to shake his hand, but instead of the Doctor he remembered from their last adventure together, he now saw a goon grinning like an idiot.

"Here – hold the space race..." muttered Glitz suspiciously, "you're not the Doctor."

The Doctor turned away crossly. "I've regenerated. The difference is purely perceptual."

"Oh...right..." Glitz didn't have the faintest idea what the Doctor was talking about, but he knew from experience that with the Doctor anything could happen. And it was a rule of Glitz's never to ask too many questions. The waitress, meanwhile, was getting restless.

"Here – what about this bill that you haven't paid?"

Glitz turned back to the Doctor. "You couldn't help me out, could you, Doctor?" he whispered. "Only – I appear to be temporarily financially embarrassed."

The Doctor sighed, and pulled a handful of banknotes out of his pocket. He selected a ten crown note and gave it to Glitz. "This is just a _loan_, you understand."

"You're a gent." Glitz passed the note to the waitress. "Here you are - and I'll pay for my three friends as well. And keep the change." The waitress's eyes opened wide in amazement. So did the Doctor's.

"Just a moment – that's a ten crown note!" But the waitress was gone.

Glitz leaned across to the Doctor. "Here, you couldn't do me another favour, could you? You see, I'm in a spot of bother."

"What's this, Glitz? Not another one of your dodgy deals backfired?"

"No, no, nothing like that, straight up. Fact is..." he glanced around, and then beckoned the Doctor, Mel and Nita to lean closer as he whispered, "I'm on a mission of highly philanthropic nature."

"What's that?" whispered Mel.

Glitz looked at Mel. "It means it's beneficial to mankind."

"We know what _philanthropic_ means. What's the _mission_?"

"I have been entrusted to deliver certain secret documents which nefarious unnamed parties would stop at nothing to grasp within their own grubby digits."

The Doctor looked at Glitz in horror. "You mean..."

"They'd kill you," continued Mel.

Three of Kane's white clad mercenaries walk in. Suddenly, a hand fell on Glitz' shoulder. The Doctor, Mel, Nita and Glitz looked up to find themselves surrounded by guns. Captain Belazs had her hand on Glitz, holding him firmly in his place. "Sabalom Glitz, we've been looking for you..."

Mel sprang up. "Leave him alone. If you kill him, you kill us too!"

"Er, steady on there, Mel," cautioned the Doctor, watching the guns.

Captain Belazs turned to Mel in surprise. "What _are_ you talking about?"

"Oh, he's told us everything, about how you tried to stop him delivering secret documents."

"Shush," interrupted Glitz.

Belazs turned to Glitz, who was trying to smile innocently. "Becoming quite a story-teller, aren't we, Glitz?" She turned back to Mel. "I'm afraid you also seem to be a victim of Mister Glitz's cavalier attitude toward facts. The truth is, I'm not interested in any secret documents which Mister Glitz may or may not possess." Mel, Nita and the Doctor looked at Glitz accusingly. His innocent smile was starting to wear thin. Belazs continued. "I am more concerned with the hundred crowns he took from my employer, Mister Kane, under false pretences."

"That was highest quality merchandise," protested Glitz.

Belazs turned on him. "A space freighter full of deep frozen fruit which turned out to be _rotten!_"

"Oh, a bit on the ripe side, maybe..."

"They were putrefying, Glitz!"

"A little past their prime, perhaps..."

"And Mister Kane does not run Iceworld to subsidise crooks like yourself. The hundred crowns, please." Belazs held out her hand for the money. Glitz looked to the Doctor for help, but the Doctor's goodwill had run out.

"I think you'd better pay back the money, Glitz."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Well, you see, there was this game of cards. I got well damaged..."

"What about the hundred and two crowns you sold your crew for?" interrupted Belazs. 

Nita was appalled. "Sold your crew?"

"Well, the mutinous rabble!" retorted Glitz. "The ungrateful cretins! I generously offered them ten per cent of the profits on our last deal, to share between them, and what did they do? They tried to take command of my spacecraft. But I was too smart for them, and they got well spanked! I relieved myself of them for seventeen crowns a piece. Rather more than they were worth, I think!" Glitz chuckled to himself.

Belazs held out her hand. "The money..."

Glitz smiled weakly at her. "Gone the way of all organic matter, I'm afraid. Down the tubes..."

"In that case, we're confiscating your spacecraft."

"The _Nosferatu_? You can't do that!"

"Oh yes we can – unless you return the money you owe. You have seventy two hours to find one hundred crowns or you lose your spacecraft." Belazs clicked her fingers at the other guards, who followed her as she walked smartly out. Glitz turned to the Doctor again.

"Doctor, you've got to help me."

"You've only got yourself to blame," snapped the Doctor crossly. Glitz turned to Mel.

"Mel – think of the adventures we had together..."

But all Mel could remember was how she'd just been made to look an idiot by Glitz's scheming. "You lied to us, Glitz."

The Doctor, Mel and Nita all stood up and moved to a different table, where they struck up an interesting conversation with a pig-featured hologram model who'd just caused a diplomatic incident by stuffing a Galactic Ambassador into a plate of stewed seaweed.


End file.
